Rick Grimes Leaving Has Turned Into Marketing For 'The Walking Dead' Season 9

It’s going to be a…very weird season of The Walking Dead when season 9 arrives in less than a month. We’re going to be hopping through multiple time jumps and seeing major characters depart, including the show’s lead, Rick Grimes.

If that sounds like a spoiler, we are officially at a point where that’s no longer the case. After rumors this was going to happen, Andrew Lincoln spoke publicly about leaving the show at Comic Con, and now we’ve reached the point where AMC is flat-out using Rick’s departure as advertising for the coming season as a way to get people to tune in.

We’re now seeing promos that advertise season 9 as “Rick Grimes’ Final Episodes” as you can see below, which has struck some fans as odd.

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It reminds me of what Bungie recently did by making Cayde-6’s death in the latest Destiny 2 expansion a known factor heading into that game, with the entire plotline revolving around revenge. I have avoided diving too far down the leak/spoiler hole when it comes to what happens to Rick because I’d like to be a little bit surprised at least, given how disparate this is from the comics.

Without knowing for sure, this does seem like it’s going to be an actual “death” and not Rick getting spirited away in a helicopter to return at some unspecified point in the future. Also, what I’ve heard rumblings of is that this happens pretty soon into the season. I won’t give an exact episode number, but it should definitely be in the first half of season 9, and it may not even be the midseason finale like you might expect.

I find it a little odd that they wouldn’t save Rick Grimes’ exit for later in the season, but this almost certainly means that Rick will not be killed by the Whisperers, who won’t show up until the second half of season 9, which some were predicting, given that the Whisperers do kill some pretty high profile characters in the comics. I don’t know what exactly AMC has crafted for Rick, but I hope it’s something better than we saw over on Fear the Walking Dead where that show’s lead, Madison Clark, was killed off earlier this season, the difference there being that actress Kim Dickens wasn’t asking to leave, and it took her by surprise.

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I am still unclear about what’s happening to Maggie, who signed a contract extension for season 9, but it still seems like her departure is on the horizon. She keeps talking about an “open ended” exit for her, so I’m not quite sure what that means, but I suppose we’ll see. It seems likely she’ll be around longer than Rick this season, at the very east.

Who leads the show after Rick and Maggie and Carl are gone? That’s an entirely separate article to write, but obvious candidates are Daryl, Michonne, Carol and Negan, but the show is dumping in a whole lot of new cast members as well, some from the comics, some not. The Walking Dead has always been something of an ensemble, but with Rick Grimes out front. I’m not sure what the show is without him, but I suppose we’re about to find out, like it or not.